I saw a question on one of the several communications sites where my columns can be read.
The question was, "Is 8:30 Saturday morning really the time to mow your lawn?"
My response was this: "I knew a guy [now deceased] who mowed his lawn at 2 a.m. He was wacko in more ways than one."
I would imagine the question from the first person -- the one about whether 8:30 a.m. is the proper time for someone to mow his or her lawn -- was asked because the sound of the mower was harmful to people's Saturday sleeping habits.
I've never been fond of neighbors who mow their grass at 8:30 in the morning either. Fortunately, I can't think of any of my present neighbors who do.
I've never wanted to mow the lawn at that ridiculous hour because it [the grass, I mean] is usually wet, and it winds up clogging the mower and getting all over my shoes and clothes.
I'd much prefer to mow at 11 a.m. or later. Preferably 1 p.m. or later. Maybe even 5 p.m.
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But back to my late neighbor who evidently mowed his lawn at 2 p.m.
I heard the story second-hand because I rarely am awake at 2 a.m., and the quy I'm referring to lived so far away from me that I couldn't hear his mower.
I'll call the guy Jack because that was his name.
As I pointed out earlier, the fact that Jack mowed his lawn at 2 o'clock in the morning wasn't the only thing that was strange about him.
I guess he also wore a swimming suit when he was out there at 2 a.m.
The fact that he didn't have a swimming pool made it an even stranger story.
Thank goodness it's always dark at 2 a.m. The thought of having to see that guy in a swimming suit at any hour of the day or night is not a pleasant one.
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No one seems to know why Jack mowed a couple of hours after midnight.
I don't know if it was because he had trouble sleeping, or if he was just plain nuts.
He didn't have a wife to look after him. He lived with his mother. As far as I know, his mother didn't help Jack with the mowing.
I don't think Jack's early-mowing habits went on long. I have an idea someone who lived closer to Jack called the police, who made a visit to his split-level home and told him it would be a good idea to not start the mower at 2 a.m.
Like I said, mowing his lawn in the middle of the night wasn't the only thing that made Jack appear to be a wacko.
I also heard he once answered the door in the nude when one of the neighbor boys rang his doorbell.
That was a long time ago -- before people called the cops on neighbors like that.
Today, nutcases like Jack would be behind bars and not behind a lawnmower.
Thank goodness Jack is now cutting grass in that big lawn elsewhere.
He died a number of years ago.
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I've been cutting grass for a long time, dating back to my years behind an old-fashioned push mower like the one pictured at the right.
That's when I was a kid in Cedar Rapids, and it was the only kind of mower we had until my dad bought our first power mower when I was 13 or so.
One of my assignments as a kid was to cut the grass.
I never minded cutting the lawn because it was a good workout, and it gave me time to think.
The workout was what I liked best. I've never cut grass with a riding mower, and maybe never will. We'll see.
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Another lawn-mowing story I recall was the one I saw documented in the paper a number of years ago.
It involved Jeanette Trompeter [pictured at the left], who then was a member of the KCCI television news team.
Everybody loved Jeanette, of course. They still do. Jeanette was recently fired by a Minneapolis station, and people around here wondered if she might return to Des Moines.
As far as I know, she hasn't.
Anyway, the small item in the paper that I recall centered around a man who was arrested for cutting Jeanette's lawn one day.
I don't think Jeanette hired him to cut her grass; the guy just showed up one day with his mower.
At least I think the guy used his mower. Maybe he used Jeanette's.
I wonder whose lawn that man is cutting now.
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Then there was another incident I heard second- or third-hand.
It involved the late Rob Borsellino, who was a columnist at the paper, and Rekha Basu, his wife. Rumor has it she's still a columnist at the paper.
The way I heard the story, Borsellino and Basu didn't know they were supposed to mow their lawn a number of years ago in the south of Grand neighborhood where they lived.
The grass kept growing and growing. Finally someone pointed out that most people in this part of Iowa are supposed to cut their grass when it gets to a certain height.
I don't know how that story wound up -- if Borsellino and Basu began cutting their own grass, or if they hired someone to do it.
If that story isn't entirely correct, I'm sure Rekha or one of the other columnists will call to update me.
